TORONTO — Isaiah Thomas stood in the middle of a gaggle of reporters, many of who were taller than the five-foot-nine point guard, at the Air Canada Centre practice court on Tuesday afternoon. A few steps away, highly touted point guard prospect Brandon Knight stood peering at the scrum, leaning on the stanchion supporting the basket.

His ears must have been burning.

“A lot of them are (avoiding working out against lower-ranked prospects.) That’s just how it is, I guess,” Thomas, a prospect from the Washington Huskies, said of Knight and players of his ilk. “I wouldn’t do that if that was my situation, but that’s how it is.”

“My main thing is that’s why you hire agents,” Knight said, basically agreeing with Thomas’s assessment. “Listen to what the agent tells you, just trust him, see what he says to do. Like you said, I’m not scared to work out against anybody. I’m a competitor. Sometimes with scheduling and stuff like that, you’ve got to listen to your agent and what he tells you to do. Sometimes it’s not about being a competitor. Sometimes it’s about being strategic.”

That’s the process the Raptors will have to navigate as they approach the NBA draft on June 23, in which they hold the fifth pick overall. You want to see a top prospect work out against another top prospect? Good luck. If one of them doesn’t have a problem with that scenario, than the other guy probably will.

Or more to the point, one of the agents probably will.

The Raptors held their first workouts Tuesday, with a session in both the morning and the afternoon. They had Kentucky’s Brandon Knight and Connecticut’s Kemba Walker in town, but the pair didn’t work out against each other. ESPN’s Chad Ford reported Arn Tellem, Knight’s agent, insisted that Knight not work out against Walker.

It is logical: Knight is highly thought of, with many mock drafts slotting him in the third spot, behind the consensus top two of Kyrie Irving and Derrick Williams. Walker’s ceiling is probably at No. 5, where the Raptors pick, and he could conceivably slide to the back half of the lottery. Why should Knight risk looking bad about a player considered a lesser prospect?

“I don’t know if it’s frustrating. It’s part of the system,” said Raptors director of scouting Jim Kelly, remaining vague on the reason the two stars were not working out together. “It was a scheduling-type thing. One’s got another commitment afterwards, another one has one coming in. That’s just the way it goes.”

This draft is full of practical dilemmas. A number of players in the Raptors’ range are European, and not making the trip to North America to go through the usual battery of workouts. That list includes Czech forward Jan Vesely, Lithuanian big man Jonas Valanciunas and Congolese forward Bismack Biyombo, who is playing in Spain. The Raptors will have to go to Europe to see them again, after monitoring them this year.

And then there is the odd case of Turkish centre Enes Kanter. He dominated the Nike Hoops Summit last year, but was declared ineligible to play at the University of Kentucky last season because he received benefits while playing in Turkey.

The Raptors worked him out in Chicago on Monday, but there is very little actual game action to judge him on.

“Big, strong, physical player. He shot the ball fairly well (Monday),” Kelly said. “Someone asked, ‘Is he a true (centre)?’ I couldn’t really tell (Monday) because he shot the ball so well from the face-up position. Yet he’s strong enough that he could pound people inside.”

National Post

ekoreen@nationalpost.com

Twitter.com/ekoreen

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